Rebuilt the lower blades guides for my bandsaw. These are the old ones, extremely simple, no thrust bearing, situated very far down under the table: Tracking hasn't been the best due to this.
These are the new guides, made from scrap pieces of hardwood, oak side guides and a thrust bearing, I am very frugal with my hardwood so I've glued smaller pieces together to make a bigger whole:
The thrust bearing doesn't really have any adjustment, it's adjusted with the side bearings as one unit. But it doesn't really need any, for now. I'll have to see how it acts with other types of blades in the future. But I only have the one 1/2" blade.
In redoing the guides I am also redoing the dust collection system and closing in the underside of the table. The old system was simple and effective, but couldn't be used with the table tilted and also interfered with having the guides higher up. The spokes on the wheels act as fans which throw dust around, so enclosing the dust from the table like this solves a big problem with the original design. Where the two green bolts are, that's where the old guides sat.
The L-shaped piece of wood is the new mount for the guides, the box-joint jig is really handy for making super sturdy joins, box joints are the strongest join there is, stronger than dovetails:
A lag bolt fits into the slot on the guide body, see the slot in the back of the guides in the picture above,
Blade installed:
I believe if I wanted to, I could modify this design to use bearings as side guides, by mounting the bearings on cams that I would lock down instead of the oak blocks. But I think wooden blocks given good enough wood, are just as good as bearing guides. The difference in tracking is very noticeable to me. The saw cuts straighter and more accurately than before. I might remake them in metal sometime in the future. But wood seems to work well enough for now.
Work on enclosing the whole thing continues still.
